The story introduced a kind of alien called “Heptapod”. As is known to all, human’s written and spoken languages are often related in meaning or pronunciation. Usually, each graph represents a spoken word. However, this is not the case for Heptapods. Their writing constitutes a completely seperate language from their speech, and these two languages are called Heptapod B and Heptapod A respectively by the main character. One big difference between human’s writings and Heptapod’s writings is that we use consecutive recognizable letters or glyphs while Heptapods use lots of intricate graphic desgins. They write a sentence through sticking together as many logograms as needed. What’s more, in their spoken language, a noun has a case marker showing whether it’s a subject or object. Yet, in their written language, a noun’s subject or object may be determined by how its logogram is oriented in relation to the verb. In comparison, these two phenomena do not exist in human languages.
Another interesting point is that the physical structure of body can inform the way of communicating. A heptapod is heptaradially symmetrical due to its seven limbs, which are arranged in a certain way. They have limbs with joins that resemble arthropods and finish in points that may separate to form a “hand” with seven points like a starfish. They appear to walk with five limbs in front and the remaining two in back. It is likely that they have no eyes. Since their bodies don’t have a ”forward“ direction, their writings also have no “forward” direction. That’s the reason why they can read a word with equal ease no matter how it’s rotated. However, for us humans, our vision is limited by the direction in which our eyes look, and our hearing is determined by our ears. Hence, the words we write tend to have a single reading order and direction, and the words of verbal communication are linear.
